CT Court Reverses Transfer Of Transgender Teen To Prison

Court rules that rights of transgender teen were violated when she was transferred to prison

HARTFORD — The transfer last year of a 16-year-old transgender girl to an adult prison was improper, the state appellate court said Monday in a ruling that will hold state child-protection officials to a higher standard for future transfers.

The Department of Children and Families will now have to present "clear and convincing evidence" that a child is too dangerous to remain in DCF custody, that the department is not capable of controlling the child, and that there is some evidence that prison would be in the child's best interest.

The appeals court ruled that when a state judge last year granted DCF's request to transfer Angel R., as she is identified in the court's ruling, to an adult prison with no new charges pending, he did not hold the department to a high enough standard of proof.

Angel, who was born a male but identifies as a female, is now 17, and has been back in DCF's custody since last summer.

For her lawyer, Senior Assistant Public Defender James Connolly, the decision didn't go far enough. The court let stand the law that allows for transfers of juveniles from DCF to prison with no criminal conviction, but increased the amount of evidence the child-welfare agency must present.

"We had anticipated that (a reversal of the judge's transfer order) would be based on a finding that the statute itself is unconstitutional because it allows for the state to imprison society's most vulnerable people without requiring a criminal conviction," said Connolly.

"It is unfortunate that, as the court recognized, there is no remedy for the harm Angel R. experienced," Connolly said.

Her transfer stoked outrage from child-welfare and civil-rights advocates in Connecticut and across the country, who thought DCF's assertion that she was the most dangerous youth in its care was an excuse to give up on a difficult case that required a treatment plan geared just to her. When Jane Doe went to the York Correctional Institute for women in Niantic for a couple of months last spring and summer, it was only the second time in 40 years that the obscure transfer law was invoked.

The transgender teenager whose transfer to an adult prison made national news slipped away Tuesday from a therapy program at Hartford's Institute of Living after being transported there from a secure youth facility by the Department of Children and Families.

She was found in good health several...

(Josh Kovner and Dave Altimari)

In testimony to the legislature earlier this year, Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said the decision by DCF to seek a transfer came only days after Jane Doe returned to Connecticut from a Massachusetts treatment facility. She had assaulted and seriously injured one of two staff members who tried to prevent her from leaving campus. One worker was disciplined for using an improper restraint. The case was investigated by Massachusetts police, and Jane Doe was not charged with a crime.

She returned to the state in late January, and by early February, DCF, citing the latest incident and her assaultive history, was seeking a transfer. Jane Doe has been back in DCF care since July and with the exception of a couple of issues – a fight at the Pueblo unit for girls and a short-lived escape from a day program – has been doing well and progressing with her treatment, DCF Commissioner Joette Katz testified during her confirmation hearing.

Dan Barrett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, said the ruling announced Monday "raises the bar in what DCF has to prove in order to transfer a child from its custody to an adult prison."

In elevating the standard from a "fair preponderance of evidence" to "clear and convincing evidence," DCF "will have a harder time arguing that a transfer to prison is in the best interest of the child," Barrett said.

Katz, a former state Supreme Court justice, noted that the court left the transfer law intact.

She said the appellate court upheld the department's authority to place "a juvenile in a more secure setting if the juvenile's safety and that of the public cannot be maintained in traditional settings available to the department."

She said the ruling only provides a "newly articulated burden of proof, along with its direction about how that burden should be met."

Katz said her agency has "worked extremely hard … to reduce the number of (children) in institutional care, and we consider this to be a significant accomplishment of this administration. In keeping with this direction, the law in question has been used extremely rarely since it was established decades ago and properly so. We are committed to the principle that youths with behavioral health treatment needs should be served in the community and in the least restrictive setting consistent with safety."

That Jane Doe is responding to a DCF treatment program now, and had been in a calm period in the weeks before her transfer was approved, "speaks to the lack of necessity of placing her with the Department of Correction in the first place,'' Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, testified before the legislature earlier this year.

Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, co-chair of the judiciary committee, said it was his impression that Judge Burton Kaplan's 22-page decision approving the transfer did make the case that Jane Doe was a danger to herself or others.

"The court recites a record of many instances of violence. The (Connecticut Juvenile Training School) director said this was the most dangerous resident they have ever had there. It just seems these were extraordinary circumstances."

Jane Doe, who identifies as a female, is described as 180 pounds in court records, said Tong, adding, "about my size, frankly."

Tong said he questioned Katz himself recently and has "a hard time reaching the conclusion that DCF didn't do its job."

Doesn't it stand to reason, Tong asked, that in these rare cases, the DCF commissioner should have at his or her disposal, "an extraordinary remedy?"

Rep. Rosa Rebimbas, R-Naugatuck, said it was clear to her that in the Jane Doe case, and in other rare cases that may trigger the transfer law, "staff and other juveniles need to be protected."

Anderson, Eagan, Chief Public Defender Susan Storey, Sarah Iverson of Connecticut Voices for Children, and other advocates said the existing law makes it too easy for DCF not to meet its obligation to fashion a treatment program for every child in its care.